1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to data processing.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Consumer shopping over the internet has grown rapidly in volume over recent years. Almost any product can be bought in this way. With the growth of the overall business, there has been a corresponding increase in the number of retailers offering products for online purchase.
In the case of, for example, specific items of clothing which carry the retailer's label, there might be just one online shop for such items in a particular market (e.g. the United Kingdom market). However, for more common items such as books, CDs and DVDs, there can be many different online shops offering entirely identical products.
This then brings a problem to the consumer: how can the consumer know which is the best source for a particular online purchase?
A partial answer to this question is provided by so-called price comparison websites. These are provided by organisations which cooperate with online shops so as to receive so-called “feeds” of prices from the online shops. The feeds are, in effect, lists of product identifications and corresponding prices at that online shop. By receiving feeds from multiple shops, the price comparison website is able to generate a comparison of prices in respect of any particular item, and display the results of that comparison to a potential purchaser. The price comparison website also provides a hyperlink to the user for at least the lowest priced offering of that item, and possibly for all offerings of that item. This link is embodied as an area within the user's internet browser which is displayed along with an indication that if the user clicks (the term referring to the operation of a user control such as a mouse control to select that link) on the link, the user's browser will be redirected to the exact web page within the selected online shop on which that particular item can be selected for purchase. Typically, a user would make use of such a link if the user did decide to make a purchase: it is a free and convenient service to the user, but for the price comparison website it is very significant because it indicates the source of the referral to the online store.
Referrals of this type are a major source of income for price comparison websites. Sometimes the online store might pay the referring website a small commission simply for the fact that the potential purchaser has followed a link to that store. This is sometimes known as a “click through” payment. Also, if the user goes on to make an actual purchase of that item, the online store will typically pay a rather larger purchase commission to the referring website. These commissions do not form a direct cost to the user, in that the user will pay the same to purchase a particular item from a particular online store independent of whether the user entered the store directly or entered via a referring website. The referrals are generally provided as a free service to the user, because the price comparison websites want to encourage the user to enter a store via their referral.
There are at least four problems with price comparison websites of this type.
One is that the prices can be out of date. The pricing relies on feeds from the retailers, which are sent at intervals which are generally measured in days rather than minutes. So the prices may have changed since the last feed, which could mean that a user follows a referral to a particular store only to be disappointed that the actual price is greater than that shown on the price comparison website. Additionally, if one of the retailers lowers their price to become the actual cheapest retailer, but this is not reported by the price comparison site, then the user will be misled as to which retailer is actually selling at the lowest price.
Another problem for the owners of the price comparison websites is that there are now in fact many competing price comparison websites. While it is possible to take steps to try to ensure that a particular price comparison website will emerge as a highly ranked citation in a user search for a product, there remains the problem that user traffic will tend to be divided between several of the competing websites.
Another problem is that price comparison sites require the user to visit them and manually search for the required product in order to locate the lowest prices. Even if the user already knows exactly which product they wish to purchase, it can take considerable time and effort to locate it on the price comparison site.
Another problem is that the consumer can be prevented from accessing retailer prices at price comparison sites and online retailers following the 2007 Supreme Court ruling Leegin Creative Leather Products vs PSKS which enables manufacturers to stop retailers from openly promoting discounted prices. The effect of this ruling on price comparison sites is discussed in Reference 3.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an improved technique for providing price information to potential purchasers.